The Athens Stock Exchange experienced today one of the worst session of the last two decades with the Index having returned to the low of March 2009. “Trapped” in the scenarios of debt restructuring and state bankruptcy, Greek Stock Exchange became once again the vulnerable target of speculators.

The Athens Stock Exchange plunged -6% and the banks became target of generalized divestiture down to -9%.

The General Index closed at 1.696,68 units with the turnover being total 333,91 million Euros

At the same time the spreads of 10 –year Greek bond climbed to 700.2 basis points.

What Market Analysts & Bankers say

Today’s dramatic session, where the General Index faced losses also down to -7%, prompted economic websites and forums participant to call for closing the Stock Exchange session.

The panic did not touched only to markets, but urged empty-headed
internet bloggers to call for “immediate release of new austerity measures”.

Economy analysts foresee a further slide and widen of spreads until the full activation of the IMF-EU support mechanism in May.

Not a few blame German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Minister aides (Westewelle, Schauble) for their reluctance to give full support to the EU mechanism extending the unsecure climate.

An important factor to mention here is that Greece is not seeking currently for loans.

A fact that makes other analysts and bankers to suspect a “crazy game of speculators dancing over the Greek bonds and their security premiums.”

A banker, working in a prominent Greek bank was telling me today that he cannot understand what is going on and why. “It is pure exaggeration; the situation has gone out of control. There is no logical explanation. It is a heavy speculators’ game coming from the big investors’ houses like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citibank”.

C. Vergos, Chairman of the Greek Association of Certified Analysts & Market Shares, talking to SBC-TV mentioned the scenario of an upcoming Greek bankruptcy as the cause for the uproar in the markets “The script dictates that Greece will announce stop of payments and will go officially bankrupt. If that were true we would see a greater fall of the Euro against the Dollar, which is not the case. So it is a pure profit-driven game”, he said.